


Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Pet Names, Schmoop, Steve McGarrett Deserves Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 13:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19791886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Babe,” Danny keeps saying, over and over and over again for months, until finally Steve cracks and wittily replies, “Yes, dear?”Or: Steve totally knows how to have a normal human response to his partner calling him babe all the time, without going wildly overboard at all. Yes. Definitely.





	Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame

**Author's Note:**

> When will the babes return from war? Or: I went through some early season nostalgia because Danny stopped calling everyone (and Steve, mostly Steve) babe all the time, so I wrote fic. This is a little ridiculous and gets VERY SCHMOOPY towards the end. You have been warned.
> 
> The title is a line from a poem by nineteenth century American writer and activist Helen Hunt Jackson: "Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame / Each to his passion, what's in a name?" The full poem is called Vanity of Vanities and [can be read here](https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/vanity-vanities-1).

“Babe,” Danny keeps saying, over and over and over again for months, until finally Steve cracks and wittily replies, “Yes, dear?”

It earns him a snicker from Kono and, more impressively, Chin, and Danny rolls his eyes but it’s somehow distinctly appreciative anyway. It’s good.

*

All the praise goes to Steve head, probably. Besides, he’s been in dire need of a tool to defend himself, because Danno is great but he has it on loan from an eight-year-old and that makes it far too irreproachable to carry a barb. Those are the only excuses he has for why he does it again, when they’re all packed into a booth at Side Street two days later and Danny nudges him. “Babe, pass me the salt, would you?”

Steve passes him the salt, as requested. “Here you go, honey,” he adds, of his own volition.

Chin only looks vaguely amused and a little calculating this time, Kono is openly grinning, and Danny, completely unruffled, replies, “Thanks, studmuffin.”

It’s Steve, then, who has a dangerous moment where he almost sprays half-chewed loco moco over the entire table because he’s startled into a laugh. Danny looks so smug salting his fries that Steve swears he’ll have revenge. That’s why he keeps going – no other reason.

*

The problem is, of course, that Danny expects it now. He takes good-looking, darling and snookums in good grace, and hot stuff just sets him off on a five minute diatribe about how yeah, he’s hot, he’s always hot and Hawaii’s weather isn’t meant to be suffered by sentient life forms and how does Steve’s shirt have the _audacity_ not to even pretend to stick to Steve’s back when they’re out in the sun chasing suspects? Steve grins through all of it, because it seems like a good day, somehow.

*

Steve’s arm is the perfect length to prop open Danny’s office door while slouching against the opposite jamb. “Hey pumpkin, we need you out here. We’ve got a lead.”

Danny gets up while he’s shutting down his computer, but he somehow finds the time to jab a pointed finger in Steve’s general direction in the process. “Wanna tell me where that came from? I didn’t start it this time.”

Steve almost asks what the hell Danny is talking about before he catches on. He narrowly saves his ego from having to take the hit of admitting that one slipped out on accident. Danny is right: there are no babes Steve can blame this on. “It’s called a pre-emptive strike,” he lies. “All part of the masterplan.”

“Right,” Danny says, poking that same finger in Steve’s side in passing while he ducks under Steve’s arm to escape the room. “I totally believe you.”

Steve has the strange feeling that he’s being humored, but he’s even more strangely okay with that.

*

He starts running out of new and ridiculous things to call Danny quicker than he expects, which forces him to dig deeper. He spends a productive hour googling things that will make Big Brother think he’s been hacked by a teenage girl. After that, he has accrued a list of decent length and starts grouping items, tackling this whole thing more systematically than before to make it last longer. All of his research is saved in rows in a spreadsheet, color coded for predicted chance of eye roll per item. It’s also sorted by time frame: one week, it’s all honey (badger, bee, buns, bunch, bear) and the next he seamlessly segues into bears (honey, cuddle, pooh, panda, jelly, gummy). 

*

Implementation of the new system goes smoothly, for the most part, though it’s not without surprises. Teddy bear spurs Danny to remember an anecdote about Grace and how, as a tiny little baby, she totally snubbed the teddy that Rachel’s vainglorious mother bought for her, and clung to the bunny that Danny’s mom had made by hand instead. It’s not at all the reaction Steve expected to get, but he considers it an unequivocal success anyway, and he tucks this story about little Grace away in a safe, jealously guarded corner of his mind. Smackdab in the middle of pie week (snuggle, blueberry, honey, sweetie, peachy) Danny shows up to the office with a homemade apple pie, and then swears up and down that it wasn’t Steve’s influence and Kono should stop thanking Steve for putting the idea in Danny’s head, or she’s not getting the recipe.

Contrarily, sugar lips (a wildcard, unsorted) doesn’t seem to have any strong effect on Danny. Steve instead finds that he jinxed himself when he suddenly can’t tear his eyes away from Danny’s lips. Not intended; not a hardship, either, and Danny monologues enough that it’s probably not even that weird, all in all.

*

Charity events do nothing good for Five-0 except polish their image among a class of people Steve has never particularly cared to impress, but attendance is not always optional. The bright side is that more often than not, when Steve gets an invite from the Governor’s office, the entire team is expected to show their faces. Usually it means they get to hang out as usual except stiffer, in clothes worth at least half a month’s salary and with champagne and ridiculously small, abhorrently fancy little cakes instead of beer and Doritos.

Of course Steve’s opinion on the catering is not universally shared, as Danny demonstrates through a brief but exhilarating verbal scuffle, at the end of which Danny announces, “If you refuse to appreciate the genius of these petits fours, I’ll go talk to Chin, who I’m sure is more than willing to accept the truth.” He lifts his champagne in an ironic toast and flounces off, leaving Steve to grin stupidly at nothing.

“Sweetheart, don’t be like that,” he yells at Danny’s retreating back, because why not, and because it’s the end of sugary foods week (donut, candy, muffin, buttercup, cookie, pudding pop) and he saved some of the best for last.

It’s only after the words are out that he realizes where they are, and that the Governor is schmoozing with a cluster of people wearing Rolexes just a few tables over. He waits for the moment of panic to set in, but it doesn’t. There’s nothing but a heavy satisfaction, shot through with a spiderwebbing sense of dread – if anyone asks, he’ll have to set them straight, and he doesn’t want to.

Which, huh. That might be- 

Huh.

*

He grabs the sleeve of the jacket that doesn’t make Danny look like a waiter at all. “Danny, we need to talk.”

“You haven’t called me by my own name in ages,” Danny huffs, affectionately annoyed seemingly just because it’s his baseline. He allows Steve to lead him through a door labelled _staff only_ anyway, and doesn’t bat an eye when he’s tugged into the relative privacy of an alcove. “This has to be really serious.”

And it isn’t, but it also totally is. In spite of all his recent vocabulary experiments, Steve has never been good with words and now he’s jittery with all the yet unspoken endearments lurking just below his skin. He grew aware of them only minutes ago and doesn’t know how to articulate any of that, and it’s too much data for spreadsheets to stand a chance in hell. He grabs Danny’s face and kisses him, long and slow and thorough, hands and heart both trembling with nerves.

When they break for air, Danny looks shell shocked. He traces fingers over Steve’s jaw almost absently and Steve leans into it like a cat. “Oh,” Danny says. “Oh, babe. You should’ve said something.”

He tried; he’s still trying.

“Danny,” he whispers, hidden against Danny’s skin, face tucked into the crook of Danny’s neck and shoulder, because this is really serious and really not and out of all the words Steve knows this is the only one that even remotely fits.

Danny shivers and pulls him closer and _gets it_. He hears Steve, even when Steve is saying the wrong thing that’s actually the right thing that would’ve been the wrong thing if it had been anybody else, but it’s not, because it’s Danny.

_I love you,_ Steve thinks, and he says again, “Danny,” and Danny cups his face and murmurs back, “Steve, babe,” and Steve kisses him a second and third and fourth time, hands trembling less and less but heart more, and it all means the exact same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments are tiny miracles. ❤
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
